


Fire at Will

by ghostfly



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Gun Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:40:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29654220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostfly/pseuds/ghostfly
Summary: "It always catches up to you,"Ten had told him once.He wasn't wrong.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Liu Yang Yang
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42
Collections: Challenge #5 — I heard a secret..





	Fire at Will

Every single day spent with Ten is an exercise in self-restraint for Yangyang, one that typically fails. 

He was supposed to be studying a map of tonight's target, memorizing all entrance and exit points, cameras, the works. Yet here he was, fooled once again by Ten's plea for _just five more minutes_ which had turned into an hour, as it always did.

"Mm, we _really_ have to stop now," Yangyang mumbles into Ten's mouth, trying and failing to extricate himself from his arms. As much as he's enjoying this, he can't risk walking into this job unprepared when there's so much at stake.

"But I will literally die if you don't pay attention to me," Ten says seriously, breaking into a whine when Yangyang pinches his side playfully.

The dramatics make Yangyang smile against his lips and Ten gets his revenge by darting his tongue out to lick at Yangyang's teeth. 

"Gross! What's wrong with you," Yangyang laughs, smacking Ten's shoulder lightly.

"Hm, only everything," Ten grins.

"I can see that."

"Can you actually? Your hair is getting so long, what good are you as a lookout if you can't even see?" Ten teases as he gently runs his fingers through Yangyang's hair, brushing his bangs to the side. Yangyang only hums in response, practically purring as he leans into Ten's touch, eyes closed. His hands are warm around Ten's waist, resting under the hem of his t-shirt. "I'll trim it for you before you go out tonight if you want."

Yangyang lets his eyelids flutter open and scrunches his nose up when Ten takes his chin in hand, squeezing lightly in demand of a response.

"No offense but after the botched dye job and bowl cut you pulled on me last time, if I see you with scissors I'm running the other way."

Ten pulls the same long-suffering face he always does when Yangyang fucks with him. 

"I think you just hurt my feelings."

There’s no knock, no warning whatsoever before Yangyang’s door opens with a bang, slamming against the wall. 

The noise makes him pull away from Ten and whirl around to see who's decided to so rudely interrupt their private moment.

“Yangyang, move. Now.”

Yangyang’s eyes widen and his blood turns to ice when he sees Kun at the doorway with a gun in hand. It's not pointed at him, but at Ten behind him. He doesn't step away from Ten, shielding him by backing him into the dresser he'd already had him pressed up against moments ago. Ten takes advantage of the provided cover and reaches behind himself to grab Yangyang’s gun off of his dresser. Yangyang hears the click of the safety next to his ear before Ten steadies his arm over Yangyang's shoulder, aiming the gun directly at Kun.

“Wait, stop, _stop._ Tell me what the fuck is going on," Yangyang demands.

"Ten, do you want to explain or should I?"

Kun's smile is cruel. His disdain for Ten has never been a secret to anyone with eyes, always managing to find new ways to torment him and taking obvious pleasure in it. Even the dead knew. At every opportunity, Kun would assign the filthiest cleanup jobs to Ten without a partner to help him, claiming to need Dejun’s assistance with something else. Still, Yangyang has never seen him act this erratically towards him.

"No, you go right ahead," Ten says, his tone silky with a bite underneath. "I wouldn’t want to deny you an opportunity to be his knight in shining armor."

It’s enough to wipe the smile clean off of Kun's face for a moment until he recovers and something far more vicious unfurls.

“Ten isn’t who he says he is," Kun spits out. "He’s been lying to you all along, lying to _us._ His agency is building a case against us and he’s the one who’s been feeding them everything, _everything,_ Yangyang. If we don’t get rid of him now it’s all over. Every single one of us will go down. You need to get out of the way.”

No, there's no way that—no.

A wave of dizziness washes over Yangyang and a faint ringing begins to flood his ears, growing louder by the second, making him struggle to find his voice. The position he’s in gives him no time to process but he desperately needs a minute to fucking _think._

This can't be real, this can't be happening right now, but it is.

"Kun, how—"

"Did that feel good?" Ten boldly cuts in to taunt Kun further, not even bothering to deny his accusation. "Playing savior is what gets you off, right?"

Kun's answering laugh is hollow and cold.

"I'm going to put a bullet right between your eyes." 

The sudden shift to the sterile calmness in Kun's voice is chilling. Yangyang has heard him talk like this before but never to one of their own. Ten might not take him seriously but Yangyang knows better than to doubt him. He looks at Kun who doesn't seem to take notice of him, eyes and gun firmly trained on Ten.

“Don’t.” 

That gets both Ten's and Kun's attention. Kun looks at him in confusion, and Yangyang feels Ten's body shift behind him, likely out of surprise. 

Yangyang’s heart, which felt unimaginably full just moments ago, is now hollowed out. 

His eyes start to sting, brimming with tears he fights to keep from falling. He _shouldn't_ be crying. He's been in situations that would have destroyed most people and come out of them mostly unscathed. Someone who's faced the threat of death head-on and walked away with nothing more than a few bruises and a story he can't tell should be harder to break than this.

He tips his head back and dries his eyes with the bottom of his sleeve before walking over to Kun.

“I’ll do it myself.” 

Hearing those words exiting his own mouth is surreal. They leave him queasy, a sick taste developing on the back of his tongue which nearly makes him gag. Ten has no response, simply remaining where he stands, and Yangyang doesn't know what to make of that.

Kun doesn't hesitate in handing the gun over to him, holding onto Yangyang's wrist for a brief second and giving it a squeeze after he does. The way he seems to look at him with pride makes Yangyang's stomach churn. There's nothing to be proud of in this moment, he thinks, but Kun must be viewing it through the lense of a mentor.

Buried way, way down inside of him is the ghost of the person he was the day he met Kun; a snapshot of himself just shy of eighteen with a fading appetite for rebellion, trying to clean up his act in fear of irreparably screwing up his future. Unfortunately, the people he tried to run from wouldn't allow him to leave so easily and he was beaten down to the point of accepting that he'd die that night. He'd only survived the ordeal thanks to Kun, a stranger who had subdued his assailant and assured Yangyang that he'd never go through something like that again. Yangyang had no choice but to take his word for it.

Despite being affected by Kun's own demons that made themselves known over time, Yangyang had been grateful to him for giving him a place to belong; sticking with Kun led to him gaining even more brothers that stood at his side. Together they were safe, and together they did terrible, terrible things. The original darkness he'd tried to escape from paled in comparison.

_"It always catches up to you,"_ Ten had told him once.

He wasn't wrong.

Though he's just across the room, the distance between Ten and him has morphed into miles, Yangyang's surroundings distorted by the panic threatening to close in on him. He takes a long, deep breath and blinks to bring things back into focus. 

Yangyang makes his way to Ten slowly, the weight of his decision causing each step to feel impossible, like trudging through wet cement. 

Ten lowers his weapon, letting it drop to the ground with a clatter on the hardwood floor. He closes his eyes and bows his head in deference.

“I’m so sorry,” Yangyang whispers.

Yangyang swiftly turns around and fires a shot into Kun’s shin, wincing as his bad shoulder jolts from the kickback.

He'll never get used to that.

No sound leaves Kun's open mouth as he crumples to the ground; he's suffered enough bullet wounds over the years to take another one without screaming, though Yangyang supposes the shock may have something to do with it as well. It really shouldn't have been that much of a surprise, though. Maybe if Kun hadn't been so intent on making sure Ten was neutralized, he'd have noticed that Yangyang went into action far too quickly for him to have truly made such a permanent decision.

For a long moment, everything seems to move in slow motion; the steady trickle of blood from Kun's wound, the scrape of metal against the floor as Ten presumably retrieves his gun, the thudding of Yangyang's pulse in his ears. Time only returns to normal once Ten appears at his side, glancing down at Kun on the floor and sighing.

“Fuck. Get him something to wrap around that, I’ll go start the car.”

“No!" Yangyang snaps, "Knowing him, he probably rigged it to blow just in case. Get my keys, they’re in the jacket on the door.” 

Yangyang picks up his pace now that the clock is ticking. He quickly pulls a drawer open and tosses a clean t-shirt at Kun for him to use to apply pressure over the wound but Kun ignores it, staring blankly into space. His silence is unsettling and Yangyang has no fucking clue what to say, or if he should say anything at all.

Ten finds the keys in the pocket but he hesitates by the door. “You sure he didn’t do it to yours, too?”

“He would never.” 

If there's one thing Yangyang is certain of, it's this. He also knows the reason Kun wouldn’t risk harming him isn’t because they’ve become as close as brothers over the years, bonded through a traumatic event; that’s why Yangyang didn’t shoot to kill, but Kun, he—

Yeah, maybe Yangyang does have something he needs to say to him.

"You've always hated Ten, just because—"

“You _knew,”_ Kun cuts him off sharply.

Yangyang pauses before responding. “I did.”

“And you don’t care how what he’s done affects your family?” Kun grits his teeth as he finally presses down hard on the wound, blood soaking through the fabric of the shirt and staining his fingers. “As long as you’re getting your brains screwed out, to hell with the rest of us, right?”

Yangyang shakes his head in disbelief, hair falling into his eyes. Laughter bubbles up in his throat but instead comes out as a strangled wheeze. Now that his anxiety has taken a backseat, he feels a little bit out of his mind.

"You wanna know what’s really funny about that? Even if Ten hadn’t come into our lives, if I hadn’t fallen for him—it still never would’ve been you. His lie is nothing compared to what _you_ did to me,” Yangyang spits, fury overtaking his senses. Now that he’s started letting everything out he can’t stop. 

“I needed help, Kun, and instead of keeping me safe like you promised, you fucking—you dragged me into this life that only ends one way. Whenever I brought up the idea of moving on, you guilted me into staying. I didn’t want _any_ of this but no matter how much you tried to toughen me up, I never complained, not once, because I trusted you. I’m not cut out for this shit and you knew that but you pushed it on me anyway."

He's glad Ten has already headed outside because although he can hardly stand the sight of Kun now, some part of him still doesn't want Kun to suffer the humiliation of Ten witnessing Yangyang tearing into him like this.

Yangyang takes a breath. "Is that how you're supposed to treat the person you're in love with?"

"No," Kun replies, defeated. 

To Yangyang's surprise, he doesn't add anything more to it. It's a shame, he thinks, that it had to come to this for him to learn when to let go.

He notices Kun's grip has loosened on the blood-soaked shirt beneath his hand and he squats down to cover his hand with his own, pressing down on it.

"Don't move that. I'll text Dejun, it shouldn't take him long to get here."

Yangyang gets up when he feels that Kun can handle it himself and he heads straight for the stairs, unable to spare him another glance or he might begin to feel enough regret to stay and help him more. He can’t, they have to leave now.

When he hurries down the steps outside he sees Ten behind the wheel of the idling Mustang, anxiously drumming his fingers against the dashboard. Ten perks up when he sees Yangyang jogging over to him and leans over to push the door open before he reaches it. 

Yangyang slides into the passenger’s seat and immediately reaches for the seatbelt, all too familiar with Ten's reckless driving; he doesn't have the time or energy to complain about it today so he just buckles up and lets himself exhale. He hadn't noticed he was sweating until now, the leather warmed by the sun sticking to his overheated skin.

"You good to go?" Ten asks, peering at him over his rose tinted aviators.

Yangyang nods, and they're off.

Ten looks like a dream, the shine of the afternoon sun highlighting the tip of his nose and intensifying the deep blue black shade of his hair. Yangyang rests a hand on Ten's thigh to remind himself that he's solid, and real, and here. 

All things considered, he's pretty lucky. 

About an hour into the drive, they stop for gas and opt for full serve, Ten not wanting to leave Yangyang by himself. 

As they wait for the attendant to fill up the tank, Yangyang starts to fidget in his seat. Most of the ride so far has been silent save for the music they'd kept low which Yangyang hummed along to as a distraction, but this pause in motion has thrown him off a bit and now, much to his displeasure, he's thinking again.

“Ten, you know that wasn't me, right?” A lump attempts to form in Yangyang’s throat and he forces it down. He doesn’t have to explain himself to Ten, he already knows Yangyang inside and out, down to his deepest, ugliest secrets, but he still feels the need to say it out loud. “I never wanted to hurt Kun, it shouldn’t have gone down like that.” 

“I know, baby. I know," Ten reassures him, sliding his hand around the back of Yangyang's neck and stroking his thumb just behind his ear.

Neither of them are the person they were one year ago, or even one hour ago. Ten isn’t the same person that he was on his first day on the job. Yangyang just can't wait for the day that he no longer feels like the monster he thinks he is right now. It'll certainly take time, some patience, and definitely some therapy, but eventually he'll be okay.

Ten starts the car up again and gets them back on the highway, cranking the volume up on the radio.

Yangyang still doesn't know where they're going and he doesn't ask; he doesn't need to. He knows that no matter where Ten takes him, he'll feel safe with him by his side.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry kun ❤️
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/yangyangfucker)


End file.
